The King’s Concubine: A Novel of Alice Perrers (50 page)

And the one name omitted in Windsor’s comprehensive summary?

Alice Perrers. What of
me
?

Well into the third week, at the end of a sultry day that weighed us down with damp heat so that even taking a breath was wearying, Windsor returned. I was out of the house, dashing into the courtyard, the instant I heard the approach of a horse. I hardly allowed him to swing down from the saddle before I was at his shoulder, pulling on his sleeve.

“What’s happening?”

“Good evening, my wife!”

“What about me?”

“Ah! No one is mentioning your name, my love!”

“Is that good or bad?”

“Impossible to tell.”

“And Edward?”

He shook his head. “He’s ill. It’s thought to be only a matter of time.…”

He looked tired, on the edge of a short temper, as if he had ridden long and hard. As if business had not gone entirely as he would have liked. I sighed. “Forgive me, Will. What of you? I’ve been selfish.…”

“Let us say single-minded.”

Tossing his reins to a groom, he walked with me into the house. He drew my hand companionably through his arm.

“You sent me no word of your fate,” I accused as we moved into rooms dim with evening light.

“What’s to write?”

I saw the glint of anger in his eye despite the shadows. I had been selfish. After a lifetime of major and minor selfishness, I was learning that there were others who needed my compassion and comfort. Windsor seemed an unlikely man to need them—and he would never ask them of me—yet I was beginning to know he might actually value a solicitous welcome from me. So I applied myself to the wifely skills that still came unhandily to me with Windsor, relieving him of his gloves, hood, and mantle, dispatching a servant to bring ale, and pushing him to sit on a settle beneath an ancient oak tree at one side of the house, where we would enjoy the blessing of any movement of air. Conscious of how weary he was, I sat beside him, and leaned to push wayward strands of hair back from his brow where they had stuck with perspiration.

“Very wifely.” He smiled. But the usual mockery was missing.

“I’m practicing. Allow me to try my skills.” I poured the ale when it was brought to us, and gave it to him, waiting until he had drunk deep. “You have been to Court.”

“Yes. To Sheen.”

“And?”

“My dismissal is confirmed. I’ve been rewarded a pension of one hundred pounds a year for my past services. And should be grateful for it. The King wouldn’t see me. He sent a thin-lipped lawyer with the message!”

“Perhaps he couldn’t see you,” I suggested, to lessen the slight.

“Perhaps. I doubt the message would have been any different.” He sat and brooded, staring at the scuffed toes of his boots. “It was strange.” He looked up at me. “As if the heart had gone out of the palace. Everyone waiting for the King to breathe his last.”

I could not reply. We sat in our own little silence.

“What will you do?” I asked eventually.

Windsor hitched a shoulder. “Administer my estates.” His smile was wry. “Much as you will, I expect.”

I knew what I wanted. I had thought of this. I knew what I wanted more than anything. I said it before I could tell myself that it would be better not to.

“Stay with me, Will. Stay here. Don’t go back to Gaines.”

His brows rose. “How conventional. Set up home, like husband and wife?”

“Why not?”

“I can think of worse things.”

“I wasn’t sure you wanted it,” I said. For, apart from the brief early days after our marriage, we had never lived together. Secrecy and Ireland had kept us apart out of necessity, and since our union was of a practical nature, perhaps he envisioned us always living apart. But now there was no need for pretense.…

“I admit I had not seen us living in connubial bliss,” he said. “But since we are both here, both outcasts…”

“Could you think of any better outcome?”

“I don’t know that I could.” He leaned close and pressed his lips against mine, a very soft caress, as if he were unsure of my response—or even his own. I returned the salute, my lips warm and inviting. Suddenly I wanted him deep within me, a stroke of heat.

“Take me to bed, Will.”

We looked at each other. And smiled.

“Will…?”

“Go on. Say it.”

“Do you have any affection for me?”

“Is that in doubt?”

“Everything is in doubt.”

“Then I do.”

“That sounds as if you are placating a child.”

The harsh lines softened in wry amusement. “Hard questioning, Alice. Worthy of Gaunt himself.”

“You can tell me the truth. I won’t weep on your shoulder.”

“I wouldn’t mind. I have a very handy shoulder, and it’s yours for your use.”

“Will…!”

“Do I have an affection for you…? Who did I seek out first when I returned to England?”

“Me. I think.”

“Who did I write to, most inconveniently?”

“Me.”

“There you are, then. I think I even told you I missed you. Now, that’s a first.…”

I punched his shoulder with my fist, my heart already lighter. “Is that all I’m getting?”

“Yes. I’m tired. Come and be wifely in the bedchamber.”

Not love. Affection. But enough—it would have to be enough. And later, when we were entwined, sweat cooling on naked limbs, he said, “Alice. Do you have an affection for me?”

So he had noticed that I had not reciprocated. Of course he had. I made him wait as I always did.

“Yes, Will. An affection.” Only my heart knew that I could lie as well as any man.

Later, I sat and combed my hair at the open window, my husband still a heap in the bed. I heard the eventual upheaval but did not look over. My thoughts were not at ease, despite the pleasure of the last hours.

“What’s going on in that marvelous brain of yours?” he asked, soft-voiced.

“Edward.”

“I should have known.”

There was no judgment in his voice, though I had brought the King into our bedchamber. I turned my head.

“Do you think I’ll see him again before he dies? I don’t want him to die alone, the hard words still standing between us.” It was not easy to recall the last time I had seen him. “He never pardoned me, you see. I would like to see him once more.”

“Don’t set your heart on it. Who’s to say you’ll ever be given leave to return. It’s in the hands of the gods.”

“More like Gaunt’s.”

Windsor’s silence spoke for itself—and gave me little comfort.

* * *

I was difficult to live with. I knew I was, and could make neither excuses nor amends. After the years as Edward’s lover, confidante, and soul mate, and recently his solace, I found the distance insupportable. He had made me all that I was, all that I could ever be. To be separated from him now at the end was beyond tolerating. If Windsor regretted moving his household to join with mine, he gave no indication of it, although I think that a less confident man would have washed his hands of me, miserable creature that I was, and packed his bags. He gave me space in which to mourn the King, who was not yet dead, a silent but compassionate space. At night he held me in his arms when he knew I did not sleep. He did not chide me as I deserved, even when I snapped and snarled at him because he was the only one I could snap and snarl at.

And when it became too much for any man, he challenged me in a typical peremptory manner.

“What are you doing?”

I was staring out of the window. “Nothing.”

“Which is patently obvious and useless. Go and interfere in one of your estates. Just how many do you have?”

“Fifty-six at the last count,” I replied without thought.

“What?”

“Fifty-six.” He looked stunned. “And before you ask, only fifteen of them were gifts from Edward. I was quite capable of purchasing the others for myself.”

“By God!” He paused, as if he could not believe what Greseley and I had done over the years. “I didn’t know I’d wed a woman of such means…! No wonder they’ve got you in their sights! If you were a man, it would qualify you for an earldom.” And he gave a sudden loud roar of laughter. “And you do realize, my dear one, that all your fifty-six estates now belong to me, as your husband?”

That got my attention fast enough.

“Only in name!” I snapped. Which was not true, but I was in no mood for legalistic banter.

“Now, why do I think I might find some noxious and fatal substance flavoring my ale if I lay claim to them?”

“Hemlock, I was thinking…!”

But he had defused my quick anger. I managed a smile, if a pale travesty of one. And Windsor’s voice became gruff with an underlying concern.

“But that’s by the by. Sitting there will not help. Take the girls and…”

“Edward has made his will.”

“Oh. Are you sure?”

“It’s the talk of the market. He’s dying, Will. He must know it.”

I heard him exhale, and he abandoned any argument he might have made. Rejecting words as a lost cause, he took my hand to lead me into the parlor that he had taken over for his own business affairs, and sat me down before a pile of accounts.

“Check the figures for me, Alice. If that won’t distract you, nothing will.”

“Who are you? Janyn Perrers?”

“Why?”

I smiled, really smiled, for the first time in days. I had never spoken of the details of that marriage. “It’s how I passed the nights of my first marriage.”

“God save you!” He kissed the top of my head. “But I’ll still crack the whip. To work, woman!”

Holy Mother! It was dull work at that.

“And if you could finish them before the end of the day…”

“Am I your clerk?”

“No. You’re my wife and you are suffering.”

I felt another light kiss on my hair before he left me to it. And through those dreary November days I concentrated on Windsor’s finances and my own. I was grateful, even through the fear that this might be all that my future life held for me.

One morning, when the frost was white on the hedges, and I was so bored as to be near to ripping the pages from the ledger, Windsor entered the room and took the pen from my hand.

“What now?” I complained. “I refuse to look at one more document of tenure or…”

“There’s a man on a horse just ridden into the courtyard.”

“A peddler?” I yawned. I supposed I would value the distraction.

“More official than that. A royal courier, I’d say.” I was out of my seat.…“Alice! It could be to your danger.…”

“How can it? I’ve obeyed them to the letter in their damned banishment!”

“But still…”

“They would have sent a force to arrest me…” I shouted back, and was down the stairs into the hallway before the man had climbed the steps to the porch.

“Mistress Perrers…”

Not another nail in the coffin that the lords had constructed for me! Far less confident than I might have seemed, I snatched the missive from his hand, tearing it in my urgency. “Fetch him ale.…” I had time for nothing but the contents. For a moment I closed my eyes, then opened them and read.…

I skimmed over the word
banishment
, flushed with the heat of panic despite the chill of the morning. Then forced myself to read more slowly.

And the fear began to drain away. For there it was. Written by a palace clerk in the name of Gaunt.

My banishment was no more. I was free to return to Court, to Edward. So much in so few lines. My head felt light, my senses adrift, and I sank to the settle at my side.

“Will?” I called.

He was standing in the doorway looking at me, reading my face before I spoke.

“You are free?”

“Yes.” I sighed. “Oh, yes.”

And I had Gaunt to thank for it, for what reason I knew not. Past loyalties? Sympathy for his dying father? To spite Parliament, more like. I cared not. He had had the banishment revoked by the Royal Council. I was free to travel, free to return to Court. To see Edward again.

“Well?” Windsor still waited.

I stood, feeling stronger, and walked slowly across to him. I think my words surprised us both. “You are my husband. I need your consent.”

“And that’s the first time in your life you have asked for it.”

I flushed. “I need your approval.”

His gaze was quizzical. “Would you go if I did not give it?”

I hesitated.

“There has always been honesty between us, Alice.”

“Then yes, I would go with or without your permission. If I did not see him, it would be on my soul.”

He closed his hands on my shoulders, kissed my forehead and then my lips. Our final embrace was strained with unspoken words and longings.

“Do you want me to come with you?” he asked, his arms banded ’round me.

“No.”

“I suppose I must find a clerk to finish the accountings.” I heard the smile in his voice.

“He won’t be as accurate as I am.” And I laughed softly into the fine wool of his tunic as the endlessly nagging fears of the past weeks loosed their grip.

“Go to Edward.” His compassion for me struck deep. “And then you will come back to me when you can. When it is over.”

I allowed myself to look at him, rubbing my knuckles over his jaw, running a finger over the hard line of his mouth. I knew him well enough to read the concern for me behind those austere, resolute features. I pressed my lips to his.

“Yes. I will return.”

Within hours, my belongings were packed and loaded onto two horses, a groom and one of Windsor’s household mounted to accompany me. I kissed my daughters and rode like the wind to Eltham, to Edward. And the official document authorizing my release? What happened to it? I had no recollection. With unusual carelessness I did not keep it.

Afterward I wished I had.

Chapter Fifteen

L
eaving my baggage to be unloaded, I stepped into Eltham’s Great Hall, good memories of this palace, which Wykeham had renovated, sweeping back and lifting my spirits. But as I walked purposefully, absorbing the atmosphere, I was forced to accept that much had changed. It was, as Windsor had said, as if the heart had gone out of the Court. It had, as I had imagined, the still, dust-laden quality of a stone coffin. The servants I passed looked at me askance. All bowed or curtsied as they had in the past, and no one stopped me, but one man, his hand half-hidden against his hose, curled his fingers against the power of the Evil Eye. I saw it. My reputation as a witch had sunk deep.